State and Government in Ancient India c8.s2.44

c8.s2.44

The Smṛiti works referred to above deal with the administrative problems in a general way. Their treatment would have been found inadequate and new books would have come into the field, had there been intense activity in the realm of the political thought. But there was no such activity. The general form of the works of the political science was determined by the *Arthaśāstra* and a few other manuals of similar nature. New political theories were not adumbrated in later centuries. The semireligious and semi-moral outlook of the writers of the time was responsible for this. Our writers, for instance, concede the principle that the king is the servant of the people and there is no sin in killing a tyrant. A good many theories and books could have come in the field, if the problem of rigicide had been viewed purely from the secular point of view. What are the duties of the king in his capacity as the servant of the people, what are the secular remedies for the people, if the king begins to behave autocratically, under what circumstances would people be justified in withholding allegiance or the payment of taxes, how public opinion was to make itself felt, what were the different milder remedies that people could adopt before they had recourse to rigicide, how were they to be made effective in the face of the police and military forces of the king,—these and similar questions would have given rise to a number of divergent theories, resulting in a rich literature extending over several centuries. But this could not happen, because our writers looked at the question from the religious and moral point of view. The king was to be a virtuous ruler, devoted heart and soul to the welfare of the people; if he was not such, then gods will punish him. The subjects had no secular remedies feasible in normal times; gods were expected to destroy a bad king. Sometimes it is stated that he should be killed like a mad dog, but how, by whom, and under what circumstances is not explained. Abstruse thinking and daring speculation which is characteristic of Hindu thought in other departments like philosophy and poetics are strangely enough conspicuous by their absence in the works on the science of polity.